Part of what got me to the place I finally arrived at yesterday was listening to your show [CanadaLand] and realizing that enough is enough.

I was ordered six weeks ago yesterday to stop reporting on what I believe is a story of significant public interest.

“What are you working on?” For reasons we can get into, I pushed back. I hadn’t spoken to John Geiger yet, and I didn’t want editors to know precisely what I was going to ask him, because I wasn’t certain that would be secure information. And any journalist will tell you, you don’t want the source of your inquiries to know your questions beforehand. […]

From that moment on, things got out of hand. Very soon thereafter, a senior editor imposed a reporting ban on me.

I’ve been in this business a long time. I used to work for the LA Times, and never has an editor told me to stop reporting on anything, including when I had top secret military documents on Afghanistan, and the United States government was threatening through my newspaper to bring me up on charges of violating national security. No editor said, “Stop!”

Interference from PMO connected Jon Geiger is suggested by those involved in this incident.

As you probably know, “Fair and Balanced” is the Fox News tagline that exists to trick the more easily fooled into thinking that’s what their actual objective is.

Check out today’s story from the Vancouver Observer about “@FairQuestions”, a Conservative friendly researcher who took thousands of dollars in speaking fees from oil companies and testified for Conservative ends in Parliament. This, after being connected to lucrative oil money roles through Senator Duffy.

The $10,000 fees were paid by the Association for Mineral Exploration of BC (AMEBC), Canadian Energy Pipelines Association (CEPA) and Taseko Mines between March 22nd and June 6, 2012. The Inuvik Petroleum Show paid $6000 for a June 21 appearance, along with Amanda Lang and Ezra Levant.

The B.C. mining group also appeared to go out of its way to pay her.

“We usually don’t have fees,” said John Buchanan, Director of Communications and Public Affairs of AMEBC. “It’s a professional opportunity. It’s a way for speakers to give back to their industry.”

4. Senators shdn't be arranging income for a parliamentary witness. Does this need to be said? #cdnpoli

www. ezralevant. com/protecting_canadas_future has a video of Krause on Levant’s former Sun News show.

ADDED: One of the most disturbing points in the video is when Krause says she thinks the debate has been skewed because big money from the cities is drowning out small voices in rural Canada, and that funding should be “out in the open”.
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“Canada had long been a proponent of harmonizing our climate-change policy with the U.S. until the U.S. started to fight climate change.”

First it was the “Made in Canada” scam plan (that never appeared). Then it was, “We will act when our American partners do.” Now that Americans are acting, it’s exposed the climate denial-ism of the Conservative Party.

So what happened? Why has the government suddenly changed course? The reality seems to be that harmonization has just been an excuse the federal government used to justify doing nothing, and then quickly abandoned as soon as it meant doing something.

“Apparently, the government is now looking for today’s climate laggard to harmonize with.”
– “Tim Gray is executive director of Environmental Defence.”

The National/Vancounver Observer and CanadaLand are two independent media outlets in our country who can tell you the real story, because their funding doesn’t come from CAPP/Enbridge, and the Conservative government.

Think also about how Mike De Souza was laid off from Postmedia, after his reporting on the oil industry was about the only reason to read the National Post.

In response to Kurt Soucy’s letter about the cost of powering the entire provincial grid with Photovoltaic (PV) solar power, I’d like to voice my support for his idea. It’s also possible to power every Saskatchewan household with concentrated solar thermal power plants similar to what’s already operating in California at Ivanpah. We’d need only three of those plants, and with a modification to their design, the solar power would be available into the night, using heat storage.

Mr. Soucy’s solar PV idea is sound also, and by aiming at powering only 410,000 households* instead of businesses too, we’re sure to have a diverse mix of power available for every electrical customer. Ivanpah took only 3 years to build, so at that pace, we could be most of the way to completely on renewable energy by 2020. The cost of 1 Ivanpah was $2.18 billion (USD), so 3 would be approximately $6.6 billion (USD).

The Premier just proposed we take another look at nuclear power, despite polling last year which indicated most people in Saskatchewan are opposed. Nuclear power can’t compete with the profitability of renewable energy, so I welcome a series of “[Solar] Power to Grow” forums held by the provincial government around the province. These forums were called for by citizens** during the Uranium Development Proposal (UDP) of 2009. Now that the Premier has suggested we need to revisit the UDP, this time we should give the spotlight to renewable energy. We stand to eliminate most of our carbon pollution, and lower our future utility bills if we make the best choices.

If Stephen Harper is serious about criminalising ‘barbaric cultural practices’, then he should arrest himself for even suggesting it

And while he’s at it, he can lock up all the other Western leaders who have savaged the Muslim world too.

Harper […] is about to push a truly eccentric piece of legislation through parliament in Ottawa. It’s called – and I urge readers to repeat the words lest they think it’s already April Fool’s Day – the “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”. Yup, when I first read the phrase “Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”, I felt sure it was a joke, a line from the “Big Bang Theory”…

“…this unique legislation, [comes] from the Canadian minister of – you guessed it – Citizenship and Immigration. Now isn’t that odd?
[…]
Because in truth, the new Canadian legislation is about foreigners or – more to the point – Muslims.”

The man [Rashed] does not work for CSIS, Canada’s spy outfit, according to Ottawa government “sources”. But officially, CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – the guys who always “get their man” – and Harper’s office have all refused to comment. The Ottawa Citizen has been highlighting another new bit of Harper legislation, Bill C-44 this time, which would allow Canadian judges to authorise CSIS activities abroad “to investigate a threat to the security” of Canada, “without regard to any other law, including that of any foreign state…”

Greg is making a good point in his latest column, but I had to throw in a Green campaign slogan into the title in good fun. The bottom line really is that the Sask Party is propping up the dying fossil fuels industry, while calls to divest from it are coming from around the world. There’s no stopping this change (for the better).

While the Saskatchewan Party remains bent on thinking small, any reasonable look at the world around us suggests it’s long past time for a big change in direction. And if if this year’s budget again fails on that front, then we should seriously reconsider who’s choosing our destination.

“study finds that the main barrier to achieving those goals is a matter of politics rather than technology or economic limitations.”

Given that there are about 410,000 households in Saskatchewan, we’d need about 3 Ivanpah style solar power plants to provide electricity to every home in the province. We can do it, and we should.

That’s me last year providing a real-world example of technology we could build in Saskatchewan to give every household renewable energy at a price we can afford. We can probably not afford to fail to build such a new system.